Anastacia rolled a glass marble between her hands along the floor of the wagon. She had bough a whole bag of them as souvenirs before leaving Merfall behind, or technically King had bought them for her since she had lost all of her money along with her purse and later most of her portion of the reward paying back gambling debts. The journey back to Valor had been extraordinarily boring for her and felt like it was taking forever, as Gilbert had to concentrate on driving the wagon, Emilia appeared to be deep in thought ever since she returned from her chat with Estreya and even King appeared to be oddly preoccupied by something and failed to entertain Anastacia. The necromancer tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable spot where she could sleep her boredom away, but there was no way it was going to work since she had already slept as much as it was realistically possible and done nothing to burn her energy.
Gilbert noticed her frustration and offered some advice. “You need to learn how to enjoy your surroundings. Take a good look at the sky, maybe there’s some birds flying overhead or a neat looking cloud. There are also many interesting things about the terrain, the flowers growing by the side of the road, there might be some interesting creatures lurking in the forest around us or wild animals dashing through the fields.” He said and took a sip of water from his canteen. “Huh, it has gotten warm again. Do you mind?” He asked and gave it to Anastacia.
Anastacia grabbed her staff and placed a single finger on the canteen. Within seconds, the moisture from the air began to condensate on its surface and then freeze over as the canteen cooled down. The necromancer-turned-mage lifted her finger and warmed it up with her other hand. “This reminds me, I need to discharge my thermal staff, so can we stop for a bit?” She asked and pressed the staff against her ear, it made a very slight but still clearly audible ringing noise.
“Sure, it’s about time I let old Betty here graze for a while.” He agreed and told Betty the horse to pull over and stop.
Anastacia jumped out of the wagon with her staff and looked for a nice bit of ground with as little grass growing on it as possible. Usually flora wasn’t an issue, but there was a non-zero chance that discharging a thermal staff could light anything flammable nearby on fire.
Ice magic was actually a misnomer, as the mages didn’t actually create cold, but rather sucked the heat from whatever they were in contact with. The way Anastacia had been thought to think about it, was that everything in the world had some energy in it, that manifested as heat, warm things had more energy and cold things had very little, and that the world always sought to even out that energy among things, so cold things would suck the energy from things around them and hot things would give out that energy until they were at about the same level as the things around them. Ice mages could use their own magical abilities to trick things into giving out more of the energy than was actually needed, thus making them freeze, but to do this, they needed something to sink all that energy into, as it was entirely possible to accidentally cook one’s innards by trying to store the energy within themselves. After centuries of research, the mages of the past had discovered the thermal crystals and their ability to house incredible amounts of heat without actually becoming even uncomfortably warm to the touch and instead vibrated ever so slightly. Items crafted from these crystals quickly became popular among ice mages and no better alternatives had been found since. As the crystals stored more and more energy, the vibration became more apparent and the hum it caused could be heard from a few meters away, it was around that point that the mages were required to, often by law, to discharge the energy, because when thermal crystals reached their limit, they would explode and violently shred anything within a massive radius. Because of that, Anastacia struck her staff into the ground and made sure it was planted firmly before allowing the heat to drain itself into the earth.
As the heat from the staff began to warm up the soil and boil away any moisture in it, a thick mist started to rise around Anastacia. Soon enough, the steam clouded her vision so badly that she couldn’t even see the wagon or her friends despite them being a mere fifteen or so meters away, and it was then when she happened to lift her gaze from the staff to see the two brightly glowing light blue eyes staring at her from only a couple of meters away in the mist.
“Shit!” Anastacia yelped and dashed back before tossing a small fireball at whatever had surprised her. As a necromancer, she wasn’t used to getting snuck up on and might have overreacted a bit because of that. Not that it seemed to matter, as the fireball made contact with its target and seemed harmlessly splash against it. Whatever it was, it was undetectable by Anastacia and seemingly immune to fire, which was concerning to say the least.
Because she had let go of the thermal staff, the discharging had stopped, and the steam quickly began to clear. Anastacia could have sworn that she saw a dark green cloak flutter for a split second as the stranger disappeared just as swiftly as it had appeared.
“What happened?!” Gilbert yelled and rushed over with Emilia and King.
Anastacia looked around just in case she could even see a glimpse of whatever it was that had surprised her. “I… I don’t know. There was someone with me in the mist, but now they’re just gone…” She muttered.
Gilbert frowned and peered into the woods but couldn’t see any suspicious movement in any direction. “Are you sure? They’d have to cover a lot of distance to just disappear here, and I’m not aware of too many creatures or people that would be able to do that.” He said and took a look at the treetops to make sure no one was hiding there either.
“Yes, I’m sure! It had glowing eyes and everything, I swear there was something familiar about them though…” The necromancer insisted.
While the two continued to theorize about the identity of the mysterious person, Emilia kneeled down to look at the soil Anastacia had dried out with her magic. It didn’t have any footprints besides Anastacia’s, but on the opposite side of the staff, there were multiple deep indentations, like someone had pressed a spike into the ground a few times. Next to the staff itself was a glass pearl that was about as big as a cherry, much like the ones the guild used to keep track of which quests belonged to which adventurers.
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“Is this yours?” The priestess asked and showed the bead to Anastacia.
The necromancer went through her pockets and belt pouches until she finally found her adventurer’s pearl. “Nah, I still have mine.” She said and compared the two side by side. If she hadn’t made sure that the one in her left hand was hers, she would have absolutely mixed them up, because both pearls were absolutely identical in every way. “Maybe someone went through here and dropped it?”
“I don’t think so, you would have noticed it laying right next to your staff.” Emilia pointed out and kicked the dirt. “I’d say it fell from whoever scared you.”
“So you think it was another adventurer?” Anastacia frowned and looked at the priestess through the pearls.
Emilia shrugged and turned to Gilbert.
The old adventurer went through in his head everyone in valor he knew in Valor, which was more or less everyone residing anywhere near the north gate, but excluding a couple of people, they would have been picked up by Anastacia way before making it that close to her and the rest didn’t match the description. Even Xamiliere, who was by far the best match with her slightly glowing eyes, was far from being unaffected by fire. “I don’t think there’s anyone like that, maybe they’re new?” He suggested.
“Well it’s mine now! They can come and get it back after they’ve apologized for surprising me.” The necromancer declared and put both pearls into different pouches on her belt.
“Anna, you threw a fireball at them, I’m pretty sure that makes you at the very least even.” Emilia said and headed back to the wagon with the rest of the party not far behind her.
They had decided that they would at least try to make it to Valor without having to make a camp for the night, though it would almost certainly be well past midnight when they made it there. As the sky dimmed and the moon climbed over the horizon, Gilbert appointed Anastacia to keep watch so that nothing or no one got the jump on them from the shadowy forest on one side of the road, while he did his best at staying on the road, as he could only barely see it in the dark. This turned out to be a smart move on his part, as about an hour later, something relatively large lumbered out from the tree line. The creature was likely to be either a troll or a bear, it hesitated to come closer to the wagon and instead kept following it from a distance. It was risky to pick up speed when Gilbert wasn’t completely sure when the road would make a turn, so instead Anastacia shot one of the flashiest fire spells she knew in that general direction and successfully scared their pursuer back into the woods.
Not too much later, they passed a couple of creatures that were much bigger than even the wagon they were traveling in, but whatever they were, the adventurers didn’t interest them in the slightest. Gilbert suggested that they were probably something called kohlenriese, a type of benevolent giant that intentionally looked for roads that saw plenty of use. Their skin was made of a wax-like material that hardened over time when not exposed to enough heat and it made moving extremely difficult for them. The giants had solved the issue by approaching the camps of travelers and working out a trade, where the travelers would construct a pyre around the giant and light it on fire, and in exchange the giant would watch over them for the night. This behavior would give them a thick layer of soot on their skin and give them the appearance of a giant lump of coal. The idea of actually helping someone by setting them on fire was extremely appealing to Anastacia and she tried to engrave the general area into her mind to possibly visit it again.
By the time Valor’s walls were visible in the distance, the necromancer had made King poke her every now and then to make sure she stayed alert, and somewhere in the couple of hundred meters between the gate and the inn, she finally gave in and fell asleep on the simulacrum’s lap. They agreed to deal with the guild offices in the morning and Gilbert offered to take the wagon back to the stables they rented it from, so Anastacia and Emilia could get to bed as soon as possible – and maybe to get some reimbursement for the nightly adventures he missed in Merfall.
Rosie had already turned in for the day and left the counter to Holly, who immediately locked eyes with Emilia, as she entered the inn. The priestess was slightly disappointed and would have preferred getting a warmer welcome but felt like it would be rude to completely ignore the girl. She sent King upstairs and told him to put Anastacia into her bed while she greeted the night waitress.
“What’s up? Working hard?” The priestess asked and leaned against the counter. She hadn’t really spoken with the girl beyond greetings whenever she happened to be in the kitchen when it was time for Holly to come in.
The owlfolk stared at Emilia blankly for several seconds before answering. “Priestess smells of friend.” She stated and offered her a piece of leftover ham Rosie had left for the waitress to snack on during the night.
Emilia gladly accepted the gift since they hadn’t stopped to prepare a proper dinner and she was almost starving. “Thanks… but it’s probably just grime. There wasn’t much in the way of baths between here and Merfall”
Meanwhile King had successfully lowered Anastacia into her bed without waking her up in the room they had regained the full control of, when a party of adventurers from the third floor failed to return from a quest about two months earlier, and Yulia could finally get a room of her own. He carefully removed the necromancer’s helmet, boots and belt before tucking her in. The simulacrum kept staring at her for a long time, long enough for it to be creepy by most people’s standards, but for him it was nothing out of the ordinary. As the lights on his armor dimmed down, King placed Anastacia’s gear on the table and by chance happened to glance at the dark cityscape from the window.
Suddenly his body tensed up and the light blue lines on it lit back up, when he noticed a cloaked figure standing on the roof of the buildings on the other side of the market.
Under their hood, the figure had two brightly glowing eyes that were clearly locked on the simulacrum, it was obviously the same person they had been chasing in Merfall before getting sidetracked by Estreya. This time however, the figure was there to get noticed, and didn’t move a muscle when King stared directly at them. Only after a while, the figure sprinted across the rooftops at an incredible speed before making a massive leap over the gap between the buildings and the city wall and scaling over it like it was nothing.
In as much panic as it was possible for a simulacrum, King started to rummage through the pouches on Anastacia’s belt, until he came across the glass pearl they had found earlier. He held the small bead between his fingers and glared at it intensely until it began to glow with a dim red hue. Over the next ten seconds the pearl quickly flashed white and began dimming down again, just like they did in the apparatuses the guild used for registering quests. When the pearl had gone completely dark again, King crushed it in his hand and hid the shards under Anastacia’s wardrobe.